upcoming

Many photography editors rely on Photoshop, image editing software, to do their daily jobs. A future version of this piece of software may prove to be troublesome for people with computers with 64 Bit processors. Although Adobe does plan to release future versions of Photshop with support for 64 Bit processors, this will not be the first edition to do so.

This future version does have features that many users have been waiting for, however. For example, owners of Intel Macs will be able to run this application without using Rosetta (A PowerPC imitating application), but completely native, and much faster. This is one of the main reasons many Mac users will buy this software.

Although Macs do not currently support 64 Bit applications, and Windows XP, only has a very limited capability, both Mac OS X and Windows' operating systems will soon be updated to support 64 Bit fully (Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and Windows Vista), and at that point, Adobe will be behind.

In a very rare move for Blizzard Entertainment, the brains behind World of Warcraft, we've been given a solid release date for the MMORPG's long-awaited expansion, The Burning Crusade. In a very common move for Blizzard, they've also delayed said expansion to allow for more beta testing and refinement, meaning that users will need to wait until January before embarking on the long, treacherous journey to Level 70. On the plus side, delays from Blizzard usually indicate the desire to make sure that the forthcoming product is as bug-free as possible, and I'd much rather wait a few more months than need to deal with a series of irritating bugs and half-completed features; the griffon paths are annoyance enough. To see the official announcement, hit the jump!

Unboxing a new tech-toy is, to some, possibly the best thing about gadgets, and there's something about cellphones that make them particularly pleasant to unwrap. Perhaps it's the knowledge that you're beginning a relationship with something that will accompany you for at least a few months, something that gets brought out every day and is often a solitary source of distraction during periods of boredom. Anyway, enough psychoanalysis - this is all preamble to CrunchGear's unboxing of Samsung's gloriously thin slider the D900 (aka Black Carbon).

Picking, strangely, LiveJournal as his venue, Artemy Lebedev of much-critiqued OLED keyboard company Optimus has decided to blog about the development of the every-key-is-a-display input device. Having finally delivered a working unit - albeit with only three keys - Lebedev today publicised the launch this week of a new product, the Upravlator, to his email mailing list, calling the mysterious device "our new keyboard". Lebedev has already revealed that it will connect to a second monitor port, though it's unlikely to be the sole connection, and that music engineers, graphic designers and and video editors will be particularly thankful for it.

With this not particularly telling photo of a mock-up giving away, well, not much at all, we wait with slightly bated breath.

As hinted at in the Half-Life 2: Episode 2 trailer, Valve is apparently getting ready to kill off one of their main characters in the upcoming episode. According to Valve, the move to episodic content, like a television show, gives people a chance to become fond of characters and, in turn, allows developers to start taking bigger risks in each episode. Of course, with the episode not set to debut until next year, they haven't revealed as to who will die, but it's a safe bet to assume that it won't be Gordon won't get the axe.

"The 3 days or 3 plays restriction applies only if the song has been bought by a friend of yours from the Zune marketplace and he decides to send it to you to listen. You can listen to it 3 times, or keep it no more than 3 days. After that you Zune device still remembers it, but now you have to buy it to listen again.

BUT if a friend of yours sends you an MP3 or any other non-DRM song, you can keep it FOREVER"

This is, as you will agree, excellent news. Nobody expected Microsoft to allow the copying of DRM-encrypted tracks between players with zero restrictions, but up until now all the reports have indicated that all tracks would be subject to the same 3 day limitations. To find out that's not true is great!

All those articles proclaiming the death of the PDA are looking to be correct - the choice of Smartphones that connect via cellphone networks just gets bigger and bigger. Soon to join the party is HTC's Excalibur, which will be launched by T-Mobile USA on October 10th as the Dash.

Gamers of a certain age will remember Epoch's Barcode Battler, a compact games system that relied on barcoded characters and power-ups to fight against each other. The key to its (failed) longevity was the fact that further barcodes could be used to create new characters, enemies and add-ons. In the end its tiny LCD screen couldn't compete with the growing range of TV consoles, and it paled into bargain bins.

Now imagine an interactive system that connects to your TV but also uses a broad and expandable range of characters and power-ups that you can collect just like Top Trump cards. Since we've been dragged squealing into the 21st century, barcodes just won't cut it anymore - instead picture RFID-enabled cards that register with mere proximity across a swipe sensor. You're getting close to the incredible gaming concept of Mattel's HyperScan.

A couple of days ago Slashgear wrote about how the VIA-blessed Samsung Q1b, the latest evolution of their UMPC range, would have HSDPA 3G connectivity as standard, as well as up to five hours battery life. Well, the people over at The Carrypad UMPC Journal must have a sideline as private investigators, because they've managed to dig out a presentation about the Q1b from the Samsung's German website.